


it's not that we're scared, it's just that it's delicate

by violentdarlings



Series: jace/alec: idiots in love [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Parabatai, s01e11 Blood Calls To Blood, the law is hard as fuck but it's the law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:33:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6342220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after Jace and Clary return to the Institute at the end of episode 11. Jace, Alec, hurt/comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not that we're scared, it's just that it's delicate

**Author's Note:**

> So many feels after episode 11! On a side note, thanks to everyone who said such lovely things about my last Jalec fic. Have some more! :)
> 
> Written for this prompt over on [shadowhunters ficathon](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83265.html?page=15) :
> 
> After the latest episode of Shadowhunters, we need some of Alec finding out Jace and Clary are siblings and Alec comforting Jace.
> 
> Title from Delicate by Damien Rice.

Alec hears it from Izzy, who apparently has just heard it from Hodge, who was shamelessly eavesdropping on Clary, Jace, and Luke’s report to Lydia as head of the Institute. For once, people aren’t trying to hide their gossip, like Shadowhunters are meant to be above that sort of thing or something. Small clumps of Nephilim, in twos and threes, in corridors and the kitchen, discussing the news. Well, why shouldn’t they? Jace hadn’t exactly been guarded in his affections for Clary, and neither had Clary hidden hers, to be honest. And look where that had landed them both. Much can be said for temperance in personal relationships.

Alec can’t go anywhere in the Institute without having to listen it. His bedroom is the only quiet place, but it reminds him of too much: Magnus Bane loitering out in the hall, all sparkle and magnificence and self-confidence. Jace and Izzy, when they were little, coming into his room at night because Alec might only been a little older than them but his siblings, they trusted him to protect them against the things in the dark –

Alec throws off his sheets, pads down the hall barefoot and wearing his ugliest shirt, and knocks on Jace’s open door before he can think of reasons not to.

Jace turns towards the sound. The emptiness on his _parabatai’s_ face has Alec’s throat locking tight, before he reminds himself of all the reasons he is angry with Jace. “Alec,” he says hollowly; it is not right, for Jace’s voice to be so devoid of passion, of anything at all.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Alec asks, sitting down on the edge of Jace’s bed. Jace is hunched over his desk, his hands knotted together. He looks like he hasn’t slept for a hundred years.

“I can’t,” Jace replies. “I keep seeing – Alec. There’s something I have to tell you. It’s.” Jace hesitates, and Alec can’t remember the last time he saw Jace second-guess himself like this. Not for years, surely. “It’s bad.”

And Alec is furious, he is livid, he keeps seeing his baby sister broken and stripped of her Marks and left to the mercy of mundanes and demons. Just the memory of Izzy on the stand is one that Alec knows he will draw on for years to come, when he needs his rage to fill him up as icy and inexorable as a glacier. Alec has a thousand things to say to Jace, and not a one of them are blessings.

And yet. Jace is shattered, there is no doubt about it, his face creased with lines that were not present only a handful of days ago. “It’s all right, Jace,” Alec tells him. “I know.” Jace’s head snaps up.

“How?” he asks, but Alec has not the chance to reply before bitter amusement twists Jace’s familiar smile into something alien. “Lydia,” he says viciously. “Your fiancée. How could I have forgotten?” Alec bristles.

“As a matter of fact, it was not Lydia,” he snaps. “The whole Institute knows, Jace. The Clave knows.” Jace’s eyes blaze, tension in every line of his frame.

“Then say it, if you know so well,” Jace growls, and for just a moment Alec can see a shadow of Morgenstern in his expression, gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Say it.”

“Clary,” Alec obliges, and Jace’s face goes tight. “She’s your sister. And. Valentine is your father.”

Jace makes a noise like he’s been stabbed, and drops his head into his hands. His shoulders are shaking and the sight of him brought low has Alec’s fists clenching, an instinctive response, an innate desire to find whoever has hurt his kin and destroy them. And yes, Alec could cheerfully throttle Jace for what he’s done, but that’s between them, that’s their business. This agony is too vast and gnarled for Alec to stand and ignore, when every sob that is torn out of Jace’s throat is as an arrow to Alec’s heart.

He crosses the space between them, aware of how Jace tenses. He’s always known that Jace’s father taught him that to love is to destroy, that pain is best suppressed and forced away and never examined in the light of day. Knowing that Michael Wayland was truly Valentine, much makes sense now. “Jace,” Alec says softly, and when there is no response, he sets his hands gently on his _parabatai’s_ shoulders, letting his strength flow into Jace, to where it is most needed.

With his hands on Jace, Alec can feel the full-body shudder that runs through his _parabatai_. Nevertheless, it is still a shock when Jace twists in Alec’s hold to bury his face against Alec’s shirtfront, his arms thrown around Alec’s waist. Alec freezes. Oh, they’ve hugged before, a quick embrace before or after battle, on birthdays and Christmas. But this, this smacks of a deeper intimacy, one that Nephilim frowns on between men, even between _parabatai_.

But by the Angel, this is Jace, and Alec will not turn him away when he needs him. There is wet heat soaking through Alec’s shirt, where Jace has his face pressed so hard against Alec’s stomach that Alec fears a little for Jace’s ability to breathe. Alec rests one hand on Jace’s head and cards his hair through the soft gold of it, much as he’d done for Izzy when she was a little girl and afraid of the things under her bed. And Alec no longer cares that Jace’s door is wide open, that anyone could walk in. what is there for them to see, but him and his second self?

When Jace’s shoulders stop their trembling and he pulls away, Alec does him the decency of looking away from Jace’s tear-stained face and flushed cheeks. “I’ll just – I’ll be back,” he hears Jace mutter, and only deems it safe to stop looking at the floor when he hears the door to the bathroom click.

Alec sits down on the bed for nothing better to do, but shuts the door first. If Jace wants to shout at him for a bit to feel better about being seen while he’s vulnerable, he’d prefer for the whole Institute not to hear. Alec looks down at his hands, examines the Voyance rune on the back of his hand like he hasn’t seen it a thousand times.

“Alec.” He looks up. Jace is back, his hair damp and slicked back, the tears scrubbed from his face. Alec looks away. Tousled and earnest Jace is one that has the power to break Alec’s heart. Then again, Alec considers wryly, Jace is all his aspects has that ability. “Why?” Jace asks, and Alec snaps his gaze back to his _parabatai_.

“Why?” he echoes. “How can you ask me that? You idiot. I am so angry with you. I could kill you myself, I’m so mad. But if you think for a second I won’t be here for you for something like this, then you got stupid while you were in that alternate dimension.” Jace is smiling. It’s a tentative, fragile thing, but it’s better than nothing.

“It was weird,” Jace says frankly, sitting beside Alec on the bed, their shoulders brushing occasionally. “You used a lot of hair gel.” Alec scrunches up his face.

“What’s hair gel?” he asks, and Jace barks out a startled laugh. Alec hides his smile. Jace had been like this when he’d first come to them, afraid to laugh, afraid to smile, scared that it wasn’t okay. But they’d broken him of it, over time; Mom and Dad and Izzy and Alec, even Hodge. They can do it again.

“There’s something else,” Jace says. Alec, suddenly weary, lies back on Jace’s bed and stares at the ceiling.

“There always is, with you,” Alec says dryly. “What now?” He looks up at Jace, the light around his _parabatai’s_ face and gilding his hair like a halo.

“At the warehouse,” Jace says, so quietly Alec might have imagined it, if he was the kind of man to imagine things. That is Izzy and Jace and Clary’s area, to dream, to imagine all being different. Alec is the one who lives in the real world. “When I asked you to come with me.”

“And I said no,” Alec reminds him. “I won’t apologise for it, either. I still think I was right.” Jace shrugs, an impatient gesture.

“That’s not important,” he says, and Alec wants to protest; their principles should be the most important thing in the world. Perhaps not for Jace, always a creature of action rather than reflection. “I meant. What happened. When we…”

“Kissed,” Alec prompts when Jace appears to have forgotten the word. He’s rather proud of himself and the calm way he can bring it up, like he hadn’t been wanting to kiss Jace for years. Alec had tried not to think much of it. They’d been fighting, they’d been upset. A couple of kisses on balance against Jace’s betrayal of all they’d stood for had not been very much at all, even if it had been a feature of Alec’s dreams every night ever since.

“Yes. That.” Alec looks up at Jace, and even in his lingering anger and concern, can see how beautiful he is. It’s an uncommon word to apply to a man, and certainly Alec has had a number of distracted musings about how unfairly hot his _parabatai_ is, but Jace is beautiful, too. He looks nothing like Clary, Alec thinks sharply, and nothing like Valentine, either. No one would ever expect Jace and Clary to be siblings.

“Are you listening?” Jace asks, but there is amusement in his voice.

“Were you saying anything worth listening to?” Alec retorts sharply.

“Oh, you know, just spilling my deepest secrets, nothing worth paying attention to,” Jace says blithely. “I’m in love with my sister, I’m in love with my _parabatai_ , nothing noteworthy.” Alec nearly chokes.

“What?” he asks, sitting up, spluttering in a most undignified fashion. “You’re in love with Clary?” Jace shrugs.

“And you,” he says, like it’s nothing, like Alec hasn’t been hopelessly in love with him since before they were teenagers.

Alec leans forward, and kisses him. Takes Jace’s face in his hands and feels the shudder run through him when their lips touch, all teeth and hunger. Alec has never met a girl he wanted to kiss, can’t imagine that touching a woman could ever feel as right as wrapping himself around Jace and licking into the toothpaste-bite of his open mouth.

He’s hard enough to hurt, as he hadn’t been since Jace left the Institute, as though that part of himself is dormant when the _parabatai_ bond linking him to Jace is stretched too far. Alec doesn’t dare to press himself up against Jace, doesn’t know how far he can push this, or whether putting his hands on Jace’s bare skin will ignite a fire in Alec that can never be extinguished. The Law does not belong in this room, not with Jace, but Alec has given his word, to be faithful, to be a good husband. And good husbands do not kiss their decidedly male _parabatai_ in the dim light of the evening, do not inch their hands down towards weapons belts and butterfly kisses down old Marks and new Marks and old scars. Alec thinks perhaps he will not make much of a husband.

Jace is murmuring something, and Alec pulls away for a moment to hear what he is saying. “Just this once, then?” he asks, and Alec nods, a knot in his throat. And Jace is shirtless and Alec is shirtless and they fall back onto the bed together; Alec hadn’t known it was possible to fit another person to him, like they’d been made for one another.

They don’t have much time; Alec knows this, even as he’d rather spend all night learning every tiny thing that makes Jace fall apart. He gets his hand down Jace’s trousers, relieved and thrilled and terrified to feel that Jace is hard, arching against his hand. The angle is uncomfortable and it’s hard to kiss Jace like this but it doesn’t matter because God, the look on Jace’s face, the sounds that he makes. “Alec,” he breathes like a prayer, and Alec considers he’s never heard his name sound so wonderful before, and Jace is cursing a blue streak and spilling hot over Alec’s hand, his eyes fluttered back and Alec has never been happier to be alive.

Alec might have even been content with that, but Jace has different ideas. Scarcely moments after has Alec wiped off his hand is he being pushed back against the pillows. Alec has the fleeting idea that perhaps Jace wants to press the image of Alec into his bed, imprint the scent of him into the sheets. But he hardly has time to examine this intriguing concept before Jace is kissing him with a pointed determination that seems to be headed stubbornly south.

Alec props himself up to watch as Jace unfastens the zipper of Alec’s gear. Jace has beautiful hands, musician’s hands; Alec has noticed them before. Capable of both loveliness and lethal intent, rather like Jace himself. Alec wants to let his head fall back, but he doesn’t, he wants to see this, he wants to remember, on the nights he lies in his cold marriage bed with Lydia beside him. He wants to remember forever the look on Jace’s face when Alec’s cock springs free, all surprise and wonderment and a trace of fear.

“It won’t bite you,” Alec says, just to lighten the mood. Jace grins, a sudden flash of teeth against the tan of his skin.

“Shouldn’t you be worried about me being the one doing the biting?” Jace asks, wicked humour in every line of him. Alec shrugs, and tries to ignore the weirdness of bantering with his best friend while his cock is out in the open.

“Not if you want your hair to remain on your head – oh, fuck.” It should be illegal for Jace to do that, but for how good it feels; to run his tongue from the base of Alec’s cock all the way to the head. To swallow him down as though Jace has done it a thousand times before. The heat of him, the tongue lapping at his cock – it is worlds beyond anything Alec has ever felt before, a million times better than the touch of Alec’s own hand.

“Any good, then?” Jace asks smugly, and Alex is torn between wanting to punch him in his pretty mouth and shoving his blond head back down to finish the job.

“You play dirty, Wayland,” Alec jokes, and immediately regrets it when Jace’s expression clouds over. But it does not last; Jace forces a smile, and the effort it seems to cost him tugs on Alec’s heart.

“You started it, Lightwood,” he replies, and Alec fists a handful of Jace’s hair and pushes him down again.

Jace isn’t messing around, now; Alec is alarmingly close to the edge, alarmingly fast. Jace has one hand cradling Alec’s balls and another tucked under Alec’s hip, and Alec reaches down to tuck his hand into Jace’s. His other goes to cover his mouth; the Institute is not soundproof, and he doesn’t trust himself to be quiet.

“Don’t,” Jace says, and Alec quirks an eyebrow at him. “Don’t be quiet,” Jace elaborates. “I want to hear you when you come.” And fuck, if that isn’t the hottest thing anyone has ever said to Alec. His hips stutter, he squeezes Jace’s hand, the closest thing to a warning he can manage. Jace just hums, and Alec throws his head back, teeth gritted, every nerve tense. And it’s a terrible cliché, to say Jace’s name out aloud as he comes, but oh, Alec is overflowing with Jace, every memory, every day, _parabatai_ from that first, unto the last.

The first thing Alec does when strength returns to his limbs is pick up his discarded trousers. Jace is sprawled on the bed, looking just about as wrecked as Alec feels. But this is Jace’s bedroom. He can be as wrecked as he likes here. Alec, on the other hand, cannot.

Alec reaches for his shirt and is stopped by a strong grip around his wrist. Alec looks down at Jace. “No more,” Alec says, as evenly as he can, with his lips kiss swollen and the taste of Jace still on his tongue. He pulls his shirt back over his head, still damp in the front with Jace’s tears. It feels right, somehow, as though he will take a piece of Jace with him when it goes. “I have to go.”

“Why –?” Jace begins, but does not seem to know how to finish his sentence. Alec sighs.

“You know why,” Alec says heavily. “I’m engaged. And this is forbidden. Worse than forbidden. We could be exiled.”

“Only if someone finds out,” Jace says, and Alec grimaces. “I know, I know. _Dura lex, sed lex_ , right?” Alec nods, and Jace is silent for a time. “Do you think,” he says finally. “That there’s something wrong with me? That I fall in love with the wrong people? My… _sister_ ,” and he shudders. “And you.” Alec shrugs.

“You didn’t know Clary was your sister when you fell in love with her,” he says. “And we’re not wrong for one another. We’re just… not right.” Jace laughs tiredly.

“Isn’t that the same thing?” he asks. Alec shakes his head.

“It’s not,” he says, and believes it with his whole heart; unbidden, wild hair and cat’s eyes come into his mind. Alec pushes the thought of Magnus away, just as unobtainable as Jace, as far beyond Alec’s reach, in a different way entirely.

So when Jace reaches for his hand, Alec holds on tightly, because neither of them can have what they want.

But at least there is each other, and Alec can stay a little while longer, before both he and Jace have to grow up.


End file.
